Posted on 08/28/2009 2:05:20 PM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
MOSCOW, August 28 (RIA Novosti) - Russia rejects all attempts to hold it responsible for the tragedies of World War II, the head of a presidential commission said on Friday.
In mid-May, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the establishment of a special commission to counter attempts to falsify history to the detriment of Russia's interests.
The commission is comprised of 28 officials from the presidential administration, the Federal Security Service (FSB), the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the State Duma, the Public Chamber, the state archives and science agencies, as well as the foreign, regional development, justice, and culture ministries.
Presidential chief of staff Sergei Naryshkin, who is also commission chairman, told a meeting that there were increasing instances of "biased and even cynical treatment of our country's history, as well as of European and world history."
He said attempts to rewrite WWII history were aimed at "reviewing the geopolitical results of the war."
He said Russia as the historical successor to the Soviet Union was being "blamed for the events and tragedies of those years" and that these attempts were aimed at "laying the groundwork for making claims on our country - political, financial, and territorial."
Naryshkin urged support for additional measures to prevent the rewriting of history, including in the educational and regulatory sphere, as well as through promoting historical science.
President Medvedev has repeatedly criticized attempts by foreign states to rewrite or falsify history, in particular post-Soviet countries' positions on World War II and the Stalinist repression.
The most prominent cases have been Ukraine's attempts to have the Stalin-era Holodomor famine internationally recognized as an act of genocide by the Soviet Union, and Baltic countries' demands for compensation for the Soviet "occupation."
(Excerpt) Read more at en.rian.ru ...
Also, anyone who mentions the Hitler-Stalin pact gets cement overshoes.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact never happened.
“He said Russia as the historical successor to the Soviet Union was being “blamed for the events and tragedies of those years” and that these attempts were aimed at “laying the groundwork for making claims on our country - political, financial, and territorial.””
Sounds like the idiotic “restitution” morons that want to blame America for slavery...instead of kissing our asses for ending it...
Have you ever seen anything on what Hitler’s plans were if the Russians hadn’t agreed to the pact? Would he have invaded Poland anyway even if the Russian didn’t agree he could?
We didn’t have anything to do with WWII, we have an alibi: we were too busy purging everyone in sight. Totally wrapped up in executing traitors.
Thats classic.
Moscow use to have a whole governmental department dedicated to the task of rewriting history.
No, those people were never there in those MayDay Parade photographs.
uh oh, sssshhhhhh!
The Soviet archives were virtually an open book in the 1990’s, and American historian David Glantz made maximum use of the window to exhaustively research and then crank out many books on the Russo-German War of 1941-1945. They may not have the most readable style, but if you want the “what happened” facet of that war, they are pure gold.
However, in the past few years, the forwards of his books have lamented the gradual closing of ex-Soviet sources by the Russians. It appears the door has now been slammed shut. It’s too bad, and a real loss to the Russians because Glantz’ writings usually took the Soviet perspective and he wanted to lay to rest a lot of pro-German myths that abounded about that long and bitter campaign. However, he was not going to be anybody’s shill and he called it as he saw it.
It’s a loss to us all really.
Funny to see you guys here.
I wonder if the 70th anniversary of their pact with Hitler is touching a few nerves.
Stalin’s pact with Hitler was a temporary deal between two scorpions. It was just a race to see who could stab the other in the back first. The Russians are still bent because Hitler won the race.
Stalin did not expect France to fold like a cheap suit
I’ve read that Stalin was shocked and depressed when the invasion came. Communists in the U.S. were still pro-German for a week afterwards until he gave them the new line.
“These are not the non-agression pacts you are looking for.”
More important, had the Soviets not entered the war against Poland, could Poland have held out long enough in the east, to allow for Britain and France to come to her aid?
Noah Goldberg well-covers those actions of the U.S. Left in Liberal Fascism, BTW.
Good question. The German Army at the time wasn’t nearly as strong as it would be by the time of the invasion of France and the Low Countries.
15,000 German soldiers were killed in the September 39 campaign, it wasn’t quite the walkover that people think it was.
Poland was done in after the Soviets invaded from the East.
Stalin was shocked and depressed. He hid out in his dacha for several days. Molotov, Kaganovich and others went to plead to him to come out of hiding and lead the nation. When they showed up, Stalin thought they were there to arrest him.
“Don’t mention the Pact! Or the Katyn Forest!”
Having been to all these places you'd be surprised as to who they hated more, the Germans or the Russians.
It stars two commies, Streisand and Redford. But in the movie Redford pretends to be a freedom loving American. Anyway, Babs is a NY Red Diaper Doper Baby. She loves the Soviets, but also the Nazis. That is until the Nazis attack 'Uncle Joe.'
Kind of like the SEIU and ACORN. Except they are red and fascist all they way.
We have the government-run media: ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, and CNN.
I don’t get it. Medvedev and company are not supposed to be commies, right? The atrocities and totalitarianism of Stalin’s USSR are known to all. The Hitler-Stalin pact aside, what is it about Medvedev’s Stalinist USSR that he is wanting to purge from the history books? What is he, a commie?
“We are at war with Eastasia. We have always been at war with Eastasia”
“Moscow use to have a whole governmental department dedicated to the task of rewriting history.”
“We have the government-run media: ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, and CNN.”
Reply of the day!;)
Polish saying, “With the Germans we lose our lives, with the Russians, we lose our souls.”
“Out damn’d spot!” - Russia
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Shakespeare always has a good quote...
A Pole is on a battlefield.
To the right of him is a Russian attacking him.
To the left is a German, also attacking him.
He only has one bullet in his gun.
Who does he shoot?
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The German, of course. You always put business before pleasure.
Any linked reading on how well the Poles defended against the Germans would be appreciated.
The TRUE Story of the Soviets in WW2 is brutal, and they killed MILLIONS of their own people.
U.S. Lend Lease M3 Lee tanks outnumbered T-34’s at Kursk, the tide-turning Battle of the Eastern Front, (TEN Battalions of them, and Churchill tanks in the 5 Guards Tank Army!) but you won’t find hardly a single mention of that in any Soviet Propaganda.
The NKVD machine-gunned their own troops during the Great Retreat, and chained kids to tanks and Anti-Tank weapons they hardly knew how to use, and to machine guns in bunkers at Kiev.
They slaughtered thousands in Soviet-Occupied Poland between 39-41. 1/3rd of the population of Estonia was suffered arrests, murder, deportation, and other acts of repression. (It’s why the Estonians fought so valiantly at the Germans side). In 1939-41, the Soviets sent over 140,000 Latvians to the Siberian Gulags. The repressions of the Cossacks and Ukrainians that supported the Germans was nothing short of a holocaust in itself.
Zuhkov’s own officers and staff called him a butcher, a man who would have his own troops shot at the snap of his fingers, nearly every day.
Soviets would send entire Armies of Infantry in to the attack, with only one rifle for every 2nd or 3rd man, with the others expected to pick up the rifle of those killed, and continue the attack.
And they slaughtered and tortured their own people who had surrendered to the Germans, as traitors. Nearly a million Russians (Around 400,000 of them former captured Soviet Soldiers) served in the German and Hungarian Armies, and they were to be shot on sight, per orders from STAVKA.
The list goes on, and on, and on...
It’s little wonder that the Russians don’t want to shatter the myths they built around what they call “the Great Patriotic War”.
bump
In terms of 2 MILLION Axis Soldiers involved in the Invasion of Poland, 15,000 killed IS a “cakewalk”.
Polish forces suffered around 70,000 killed, and outside of Regiment-sized events, never put together a cohesive defense. They never recovered from the “Defend-Forward” positions they held at the beginning of the War.
bttt
I’ve got a great read for you if you haven’t already read it:
“Ivan’s War” It’s upstairs and I’m too lazy right now to go get it for the author’s name. Someone finally got around to making an anthology of memoirs of some ordinary Red Army soldiers. I’m sure it’s a bit sanitized. Most of the brutal stuff you wrote about didn’t have any survivors to leave memoirs.
LOL - post of the day! Still laughing at that photo....I should send to Rick Pitino since he needs a pick-me-up.
Problem was, after the concrete was delivered, the authorities arrived to see the new memorial, which was no where to be found. Some quick-thinking Lithuanian told them, "the concrete was of too poor quality to use in a Lenin memorial, so we used it to make basketball courts."
Don’t think so. The French moved like a snail. The British slower. The Germans had the Poles on three sides, with more modern equipment, particularly aircraft, tanks, and anti-tank guns; and the most advanced military doctrine on the planet. They also had an attack plan that meshed, perfectly from their point of view, with Poland’s forward deployment. Caught ‘em in a double envelopment that evolved into a concentric double envelopment.
While the Poles fought bravely, in reality it was over in a little over two weeks.
By the time the Soviets moved in, most of the Polish Army was unavailable above regimental strength. In point of fact, the Germans were well past the demarcation line when the Reds showed. Guderian had to give them Brest-Litovsk. [He had to retake it in 1941.]
No. The USSR was an agressor and the communists running it cant afford for the people to learn the truth.
"It’s little wonder that the Russians don’t want to shatter the myths they built around what they call “the Great Patriotic War”."
Great post. The bottom line is, when it came to brutality, Stalin was the Old Master, Hitler his precocious pupil. And, it is a debatable point, imho, as to which leader ended their lives responsible for more innocent deaths.
Most curious that:
"President Medvedev has repeatedly criticized attempts by foreign states to rewrite or falsify history, in particular post-Soviet countries' positions on World War II and the Stalinist repression,"...
so that Russia could be ""blamed for the events and tragedies of those years" and that these attempts were aimed at "laying the groundwork for making claims on our country - political, financial, and territorial." "
No need to "rewrite or falsify" anything. The truth is plenty damning enough.
Hitler ordered the invasion of Poland months before talks even began with Stalin. And Stalin was so disgusted by British and French appeasement of Hitler, he wouldn't trust them for anything.
Remember that Stalin's intelligence services were excellent, and he knew pretty much everything Hitler was up to. So, what Stalin gained by his 1939 nonaggression pact was at least the following:
Point is: Stalin was just as eager for the agreement as Hitler. And the western allies had nothing of any interest to offer Stalin -- only bargaining chips in his negotiations with Hitler.
Here's the bottom line: had there been no 1939 Stalin-Hitler nonaggression pact, the Germans would have started their invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 that much closer to Moscow, with little or no resistance in the Baltic countries. The result would have been Hitler's victory over Stalin in 1941, and most probable victory in the war.
So Stalin was the ultimate survivor. But he paid a huge, huge price in other people's blood.
The one thing to consider is that without the Soviets invading Poland from the East, the Germans would have had a much rougher go of it in occupying Poland. Not that the Germans wouldn’t have ultimately defeated Poland. But the occupation would have been much more thornier for them in terms of resistance. They probably wouldn’t have taken France quite so quickly.
Great one!
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